"We have to work the dark side, if you will, spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world."

Monday, March 1, 2010

CIA Target a "Gift From Allah"

That inside suicide job that took out seven CIA operatives: Allah takes a vengeful whack the CIA with a double agent fitted with a "martyrdom belt."

In a posthumously released video message, the suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. employees on Dec. 30 said that his original target had been his handler from Jordanian intelligence, and that an invitation to meet C.I.A. officers at a remote base in Afghanistan had been an unexpected boon.

“We planned for something but got a bigger gift, a gift from Allah, who brought us, through his accompaniment, a valuable prey: Americans, and from the C.I.A.,” said the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician who carried out the attack, in a 44-minute video posted on extremist Web sites Sunday.

“That’s when I became certain that the best way to teach Jordanian intelligence and the C.I.A. a lesson is with the martyrdom belt,” Mr. Balawi said in the video, as translated by IntelCenter, a Virginia company that monitors online postings by extremist groups. The Jordanian officer who had introduced him to the C.I.A. was also killed in the attack.

Mr. Balawi, who had told the C.I.A. he could get access to top Qaeda leaders but turned out to be a double agent, called for more attacks on Jordanian intelligence, noting its cooperation with the United States.

In an earlier video, released 10 days after the attack, Mr. Balawi was shown seated with Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and described the attack as revenge for the killing last year by a C.I.A. drone of the Pakistani Taliban’s previous leader, Baitullah Mehsud.